WEX (WEX) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

WEX (WEX 0.25%)
Q1 2022 Earnings Call
Apr 28, 2022, 10:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning. My name is David, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the WEX Q1 2022 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded.

[Operator instructions] Thank you. Steve Elder, senior vice president of investor relations, you may begin your conference.

Steve Elder -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. And good morning, everyone. With me today is Melissa Smith, our chairman, CEO; and our interim CFO, Jen Kimball. The press release we issued earlier this morning and a slide deck to walk through our prepared remarks have been posted to the Investor Relations section of our website at wexinc.com.

A copy of the release and the slide deck have also been included in 8-Ks we submitted to the SEC. As a reminder, we will be discussing non-GAAP metrics, specifically adjusted net income attributable to shareholders, which we refer to as adjusted net income, or ANI, and adjusted operating income during our call. Adjustments for this year's first quarter to arrive at these metrics include unrealized gains on financial instruments, net foreign currency remeasurement gain, change in fair value of contingent consideration, acquisition-related intangible amortization, other acquisition and divestiture-related items, stock-based compensation, other costs, debt restructuring and debt issuance cost amortization, ANI adjustments attributable to noncontrolling interests, and certain tax-related items as applicable. Please see Exhibit 1 of the press release for an explanation and our reconciliation of adjusted net income attributable to shareholders to GAAP net income attributable to shareholders, and an explanation and reconciliation of adjusted operating income to GAAP operating income.

The company provides revenue guidance on a GAAP basis and earnings guidance on a non-GAAP basis due to the uncertainty and indeterminate amount of certain elements that are included in reported GAAP earnings. I would also like to remind you that we will discuss forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in our press release, and the risk factors identified in our annual report on Form 10-K filed for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed with the SEC on March 1, 2022 and subsequent SEC filings. While we may update forward-looking statements in the future, we disclaim any obligations to do so.

You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, all of which speak only as of today. With that, I'll turn the call over to Melissa.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. Before diving into our Q1 results, I'd like to thank our dedicated team members across the globe, who continued to deliver great results even in the quarter that included the impact of the omicron variant. As a result of their efforts, 2002 is off to a great start for WEX.

I'd also like to take a moment to touch on the war in Ukraine. Our hearts continue to be with the people of Ukraine, and we remain hopeful for a return to peace. As we communicated at the beginning of the conflict, WEX did not and does not have any employees or operations in Russia. We took additional steps since we last spoke to stop supporting business in Russia.

The impact of these decisions is immaterial to our financial results at less than $5 million for year end revenue. Now turning to our results. In the first quarter, we once again delivered record revenue generating $518 million, a year-over-year increase of 26%, driven by a continued recovery in travel volumes, a strong increase in fuel volumes, a very good open enrollment season, and a favorable fuel price environment. This increase includes a 6% negative impact from a change in accounting presentations that we have discussed in each of the last two quarters.

To put this in perspective, of the $107 million of year-over-year revenue increase, approximately $38 million was related to higher fuel prices and unfavorable foreign exchange rate, and approximately $69 million was for all other factors. So we're very pleased with this result. Total purchase volume processed across the organization in the first quarter grew 66% year over year to a record high $28 billion, reflecting the strong double-digit growth rates in each of our segments. While travel volumes globally have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels as an industry, WEX had record high travel-related purchase volumes for the first quarter at more than $7 billion.

We also had a significant contribution from the new AvidXchange relationship, as well as higher fuel prices. Record quarterly revenue paired with expense scalability resulted in adjusted net income per diluted share of $2.88, an increase of 61% compared to the same quarter last year. We experienced significant growth from operations, which contributed about half of the increase in EPS, and high fuel prices drove the other half of the increase. On an adjusted basis, the first quarter of 2022 was the most profitable in WEX's history as we continue to execute well on all fronts.

Now let me take a step back to discuss the key drivers of our first quarter results in more detail. We continue to win new customers and expand relationships with existing partners across the WEX ecosystem. First, travel enjoyed a strong rebound with hotel industry revenue in some of our key markets trending above 2019 levels in February and March. There was a sharp increase in demand in both air and hotel travel when the threat of omicron was deemed less severe than previous variants.

This resulted in first quarter purchase volume for travel-related customers of nearly three times last year's level, despite uncertainty caused by the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the slower recovery in Asia. On the corporate payments side, AvidXchange volumes continued to ramp and the implementation phase is now complete. As a reminder, we won the right to be Avid's partner based on our wide range of different card products, extremely high reliability, and our all-in-one solution across build technology and funding capabilities. Also in the corporate payment space, we renewed a long-term agreement with Commerzbank, one of our major bank customers, who uses our technology platform in the state of Arkansas renew its payable business contract.

In mobility, we're seeing a strong uptick in new applications, particularly from the over-the-road small carriers. Given the rise in fuel prices, small carriers are spending more money on fuel, need more credit, and are looking for discounts in card programs to help defray costs. New applications from this market were up 26% year over year in the quarter, and March had the highest volume of new applications ever. Then later last quarter, more than half of these new accounts were sold and implemented digitally.

We also signed a new agreement to provide a private label program to TravelCenters of America. Engaging with WEX is powerful global platform allows TA to provide professional drivers a competitive quality program with many benefits and purchasing options. In addition to our success with smaller fleets, we signed several new large customers during the quarter, including the largest U.S. retail propane distributor in a top 10 U.S.

city. In addition, we were added to the list of approved suppliers for Crown Commercial Service, which is the U.K. equivalent of the GSA in the U.S. Our broad-based success is also reflected in our strong renewals, including a major auto parts retailer.

In the Health and Employee Benefits segment, one of the nation's largest vocational rehabilitation and independent living programs, which is a state-run benefits program, wanted to find a company to work with to help achieve their vision of simplifying and streamlining the way that they distribute benefits to their clients. They chose WEX because our technology platform uniquely positioned us to be able to support multiple benefit programs delivered in one solution. WEX was able to extend our core product offerings in the consumer-directed healthcare market and create a new and unique product offering meeting their needs. The clients were able to have a simplified experience by being able to use money from the state programs they're eligible for, like stipends for education, transportation or healthy foods all on one card.

The seamless technology behind the scenes uses custom merchant networks, applies rules, and applies the correct [Inaudible] to deliver available funds right at the point of sale. This is a great example of the network effect that differentiates WEX in the marketplace that we talked about at Investor Day. Not only do we meet our customers where they want to be met, but we have the ability to deploy customer-driven improvements across our network to maximize benefits, in part due to the deep level of integration into the business processes. Each new customer and partner adds additional utility to our platform, enhancing the network effects to our overall offering.

Turning now to our technology platform. We continue to invest ahead of our customers to anticipate their needs. Given the recent sharp rise in fuel prices, we're receiving very positive customer feedback around our mobile driver app, as customers have been utilizing the app to find the best fuel price in their area. This week, we've launched Flume, a new integrated software and payment solution.

As we discussed at our Investor Day, we're excited about this solution as we're targeting our 450,000 small and mid-sized businesses that are searching for an automated solution while leveraging our digital marketing tools. We're willing to [Inaudible] to the market and we'll continue to enhance the product based on customer feedback while delivering a seamless digital experience to our customers. We also had a significant product release for a healthcare product set that went live in March. The release delivered a highly personalized and engaging consumer experience.

Investment in data and analytics, an updated mobile application, and benchmarking tools for our partner channel. Turning now to our electric vehicle vision. As outlined at Investor Day, we are well positioned to help our customers succeed in their transition to electric vehicles. In the second quarter, we expect to roll out a charging solution for our European customers that ties directly to their existing fleet account, providing central billing and access to over 200,000 charging points.

We take our role of helping customers transition to cleaner fleet seriously as part of our broader focus on ESG, and we'll be publishing a comprehensive, updated ESG report this summer. As we move forward, we remain focused on our purpose, simplifying the business of running a business, and this includes our own business. We're looking at ways to evolve, how we operate our core business and to create the resources we need for future growth. One way we're doing this is increasing the amount of automation in the business.

Like our customers, we're currently benefiting from and want to take even more advantage of advanced tools like AI and robotics that we are developing to free our employees from business complexities so that they can focus on higher value work in continuing to strengthen our competitive position. We also stand to benefit from a robust near-term environment. Travel industry bookings for the U.S. and European summer seasons are well ahead of 2019 levels.

Our digital marketing channels continue to deliver great results and we are well positioned to capitalize on improving macro trends across the company. Looking ahead, the future for WEX remains incredibly bright. We entered this year with significant momentum and delivered impressive financial results during the first quarter. The trends remain strong.

We continue to win new customers in each of our segments, enhancing our leading technology platform and capitalize on the opportunities in front of us. All of these trends give me confidence in our ability to deliver on our long-term financial targets. Before I turn this over to Jen, I want to welcome Jagtar Narula, who will be joining WEX as our new CFO effective May 25th. As I mentioned in tuesday's announcement, Jagtar has proven strategic and financial experience leading innovative technology companies, and we're looking forward to having him on board.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank Jen for doing an amazing job over the past few months, both leading the finance organization through change during a critical time of year, and also jumping in to play a key role throughout Investor Day. Jen will continue to serve as both interim CFO and chief accounting officer until Jagtar begins his new role on May 25th. I'll now turn it over to Jen to walk you through our results in more detail. Jen?

Jen Kimball -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Melissa, and good morning, everyone. As you just heard from Melissa, we delivered a strong first quarter, building on the momentum we had coming into the year. We're firing on all cylinders and had yet another record-breaking quarter. The large, attractive markets we operate in make us well positioned to achieve our long-term growth target.

In light of our strong first quarter and now with better line of sight for the remainder of '22, we are raising our full-year revenue and ANI EPS guidance that we provided back in February. Let's start with the quarter results on Slide 6. For the first quarter, total revenue exceeded the high end of our guidance for three primary reasons: continued volume favorability, accelerated ramp in travel spend, and higher fuel prices. Total revenue came in at $517.5 million, a 26% increase over Q1 2021 with more than 80% of revenue for the quarter recurring in nature.

We define recurring revenue as payment processing and account servicing revenue, revenue from our factoring business, transaction processing fees, and other small item. From an earnings perspective on a GAAP basis, we had net income attributable to shareholders of $122.8 million. Non-GAAP adjusted net income was $131.1 million or $2.88 per diluted share. This represents a 61% increase over prior year as we see the benefit of higher revenue drop through to our margin.

Turning to Slide 7 and breaking down the revenue by segment. Fleet grew 31%, traveling corporate solutions posted a 9% increase, and finally, health with up 26%. The last two quarters, we discussed the change in revenue presentation for a specific customer contract in travel and corporate solutions that will impact the comps in this segment through Q3, and you'll see that in the appendix. On a comparable basis, revenue growth in the segment was 47%, compared to revenue growth for the total company of 32%.

Now let's move to segment results, starting with fleet on Slide 8. Fleet revenue for the quarter was $319.1 million, a 31% increase over prior year, powered by strong volumes from new customer wins and renewal, higher fuel prices, and recovery in the existing customer base. Payment processing transactions were up 12% year over year. Over-the-road transactions maintained their strong growth up 23%, and North America fleet was up 13%.

As you saw on our metrics, the net late fee rate stayed relatively flat to prior year. Finance revenue was up 51% due to significant increases in volumes, fuel prices, and late fee instances. The average domestic fuel price in Q1 '22 was $3.95 versus $2.72% in Q1 of 2021. This increased fleet revenue by approximately $41 million and includes an offset of approximately half a million dollars for European fuel price spreads, which generally move in the opposite direction to the U.S.

The benefit of higher fuel prices compared to our Q1 guidance was approximately $0.14 of EPS, which is lower than we would normally expect. There are two primary drivers to this. First, when fuel prices spike as quickly as they did in March, it takes time for late fees to catch up. Second, we saw a bigger increase in diesel fuel prices, which is more fixed fee based.

As you know, due to the fixed transaction fees included in our payment processing revenue, when fuel prices go up, interchange rates trend down. So that's what you're seeing in the 14-basis-point change versus last year. To finish fleet, we are focused on the impact of high fuel prices on customer behavior. That being said, we haven't historically seen meaningful changes in volume from rising fuel prices, assuming the economy remains strong.

In LTR, and to a lesser extent in the local fleet, we're seeing more frequent transactions that are slightly smaller to cope with higher prices. We also expect that the high prices will increase our credit losses toward the high end of our annual guidance range, which are more in line with pre-pandemic levels, as customers absorb these higher costs. Turning to travel and corporate solutions on Slide 9. Total segment revenue for the quarter increased 9% to $77.3 million.

On a comparable basis, adjusted for an accounting presentation change that occurred in Q4 last year, revenue growth was 47%. There's a slide in the earnings presentation appendix that details the adjustments. Additionally, purchase volume issued by WEX was $11.8 billion, which is an increase of 93% versus last year. Travel-related customer volume represented approximately 60% of the total spend and nearly tripled over last year.

Breaking revenue down, corporate payments customer revenue was up 18%, adjusted for the revenue presentation change led by continued strength in the partner channel, including the AvidXchange relationship. Revenue from travel-related customers was up 151% versus Q1 2021, reflecting increasing consumer demand. We are pleased with these results and are well positioned to capture future growth as the travel industry continues its global recovery. Finally, let's take a look at the health segment on Slide 10.

We continue to drive strong growth resulting in Q1 revenue of $121.1 million. This represents a 26% increase over the prior year. The acquisition of benefitexpress contributed approximately $11 million in revenue. Staff account growth was 15% in Q1 versus the prior year, building up a strong open enrollment season, including accounts related to benefitexpress.

Purchased volume increased 10%, leading to a 9% increase in payment processing revenue. We also realized approximately $4 million in revenue from the HSA deposits that were moved into WEX Bank late last year. The interest income that we earned from these deposits will be a significant lever to driving long-term revenue growth as interest rates increase and the deposit base grows. Now let's move on to adjusted operating income margin on Slide 11.

In fleet, adjusted operating income margin for the quarter was 50.2%, up from 48.5% in 2021. This is the fourth consecutive quarter with fleet adjusted margins higher than 50%. The increase is from revenue drop through as we continue to benefit from our ability to scale. Credit loss was higher this quarter as expected, increasing to 15 basis points of spend volume.

Although we expect basis points to remain closer to historical norm versus the pandemic lows we saw in the last few years, we had already considered that in the guidance ranges we provided back in February. Travel and corporate solutions delivered adjusted operating income margin of 36.7%, up from 9.9% in Q1 last year. There's been significant improvement in the adjusted margins as travel volume accelerated and drove much of the margin improvement we saw on a total company basis. The sequential decline in adjusted margin of approximately 2% is due to the benefit from card network incentives we spoke about in Q4.

Revenue drop through for the segment is high given our relatively fixed cost base and we also continue to see benefits from the eNett and Optal synergy. In health, adjusted operating income margin was 29.3%, compared to 31.7% in 2021. The acquisition of benefitexpress and some expense timing is driving a lower year-over-year comparison. All of this led to adjusted operating income margin for the company, a 39.2%, which is up from 34% last year, largely driven by the travel and corporate solutions segment.

Shifting gears now to Slide 12, I'll provide an update on the balance sheet. We remain in a healthy financial position and ended the quarter with $578 million in cash. We had over $698 million of available borrowing capacity and corporate cash of $156 million, both as defined under the company's credit agreement. As you'd expect, we saw a sizable increase in our accounts receivable of $972 million versus year end.

From higher fuel prices and more volume. Our invested HSA deposits at WEX Bank ended the quarter at $978 million. These assets are currently yielding approximately 1.6%, or about $4 million in Q1 revenue. There's an additional $250 million of HSA deposits held at WEX Bank that we are currently using as replacement funds for certificates of deposit.

We continue to evaluate opportunities to optimize earnings from the remaining $1.8 billion of HSA deposit assets that we control but are not held at WEX Bank. We intend to bring more deposits onto the balance sheet this year. These deposits should continue to be a good source of revenue for us as interest rates rise and will act as a natural hedge through interest rate cycles. At the end of the quarter, the total outstanding balance on our revolving line of credit, term loans, and convertible notes was $2.8 billion.

The leverage ratio, as defined in the credit agreement, stands at 3.3 times, which is well within our long term target of 2.5 to 3.5 times and down from the end of 2021 due to strong earnings. Our strong and consistent free cash flow generation give us a tremendous amount of financial flexibility to invest back into the business and pursue growth opportunities. Finishing off the balance sheet, you'll see that we came to an agreement to purchase the remaining non-controlling interests related to our health business. The contract is structured so that WEX will make payments totaling $234 million plus interest over a three-year period beginning in March 2024.

This is shown at a discounted amount of $217 million and other liabilities. Finally, let's move to revenue and earnings guidance for the second quarter and the full year on Slide 13. The first quarter was a very good quarter for us and I'm pleased to share that we are significantly increasing our guidance for '22. Before I get into the specifics, I want to remind you again of the impact of a renewed contract for a significant corporate payments partner that occurred in Q4, which alter the accounting presentation from gross revenue recognition to net with a corresponding change in sales and marketing costs, as shown in the appendix of the slide.

There is no material impact on earnings from this change. But several of the segment metrics, including the revenue growth rate, are not comparable to prior periods. You can see the comparable numbers in the appendix to the slide deck. Starting with the second quarter, we expect to report revenue in the range of $555 million to $565 million and adjusted net income in the range of $154 million to $159 million.

We expect ANI EPS to be between $3.35 and $3.45 per diluted share. For the full year, we expect to report revenue in the range of $2.155 billion to $2.195 billion and adjusted net income in the range of $569 million to $588 million. We expect ANI EPS to be between $12.40 and $12.80 per diluted share. For the full year, these updated ranges represent an increase of $105 million in revenue and $1.2 of EPS at the midpoint from our previous guidance.

Including Q1 actual results, higher fuel prices contributed approximately $75 million of the increase to our revenue guidance and $1 of EPS compared to our previous guidance. These amounts are slightly lower than our historical sensitivity of the fuel price changes would suggest as I talked about earlier. This also means that excluding the impacts of fuel prices, we are raising our 2022 guidance at the midpoint by $30 million in revenue and $0.20 in EPS based on our strong Q1 results and the continuation of both good execution and a rebound in volume. Now let me walk you through a few more assumptions.

Exchange rates are as of the end of March 2022. We estimate domestic fuel prices will average $4.46 per gallon for the second quarter and $4.13 for the full year. Both are based on the NYMEX futures price from last week. The adjusted net income tax rate is expected to be between 25% and 26% for the second quarter and the full year.

And finally, we're assuming approximately 47.5 million shares outstanding, including the assumption that the share count will continue to include 1.6 million shares associated with the convertible notes. As a result of including the shares, approximately $3.8 million of interest expense each quarter net of tax will be added back to net income to calculate EPS. And with that operator, please open the line for questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll take our first question from Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Mihir Bhatia -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to just quickly touch -- go back to the discussion about what you're seeing in the freight markets here with the movement in place. Are you hearing more about a freight recession a little bit, right? So there had been more talk about -- just talk about the trends you're seeing in the various segments.

And anything worth calling out regarding volume trends in recent weeks? Thank you.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. It's Melissa. I'll respond back to that. We are -- if you look across the fleet business, the North American fleet business continues to rebound.

And I think that is tied more to just the reopening of businesses and so we've seen some of the great volume trends there. In the over-the-road business, we are hearing from customers that they're seeing a little bit more softness than they have over the last couple of years in terms of just volume trends. But I would say on the -- a little bit side just to emphasize that, the spot rates are softer than they have been. And across the portfolio, what we're hearing from our customers is a lot of focus around how to make sure that people have access to labor inflation.

Some of the big macro trends that everyone's talking about is certainly embedded in the conversations we're having with our customers across the portfolio.

Mihir Bhatia -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

So, anything in recent weeks that I guess like just in your commentary been around you the credit losses increasing, is there anything we should be, like, really thinking about here just more recently?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. If you look at those trends, they've remained really strong for us and it's part of what we baked into when we looked at our second quarter guidance. So from a -- to kind of run across the business from a freight perspective, like I said, they're seeing a little bit of softness in spot rates, which will translate into a little bit less revenue in our factoring business. But from a volume perspective, volumes remain strong and we've assumed that within our second quarter guidance and for our full-year guidance.

One of the things that we thought about when we laid out our guidance for both second quarter and the full year, the second half of last year, we started to see this kind of movement in reopening and some strong trends that we just continue to see. You can see that reflected overall. If you look at our growth rates for Q1, excluding fuel prices and FX and adjusting that one customer back from a revenue recognition perspective, first quarter growth was 22% in revenue and 30% in ANI EPS. And from a full year perspective at the midpoint, we're assuming that that same like for like revenue growth of 13% and our EPS growth of 17% at the midpoint.

So really strong within our long-term ranges. What we believe is you're going to see some of these -- with strengthening trends continue to play out over the course of the year, but you'll have harder comps as you get toward the end of the year because some of that started to happen at the end of 2021.

Mihir Bhatia -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

No, that's helpful. And this is my last question. Can you just remind us, what are you assuming in terms of just the travel recovery as we progress through the year? It looks like we got a nice -- you've seen some good volumes. You all saw some of the volumes even this quarter, and obviously we're hearing positive commentary from the OTAs and airlines, etc.

So what are you all assuming for the travel recovery guidance? Thank you.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, if you look at our first quarter results, our travel volume -- and reminder, our travel volume are hotels. So we're facilitating largely, we are facilitating some airline payments that by far the largest part are for hotels and they tend to lag the broader marketplace because it is when people actually stay there as opposed to when they're booking. But in the first quarter, we were about 70% pro forma of the number for the first quarter 2019. So, tracking nicely.

And in April that's been moving up. We're closer to 75%, 80% of our 2019 numbers for April. So really nice trends and we feel really good about not only that trend, but our ability to actually show that drop through to earnings because of the scalability of that part of the business.

Mihir Bhatia -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Next we'll go to Jeff Cantwell with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Jeff Cantwell -- Well Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Hey. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for allowing me to join this call. I was wondering if you could drill down a little bit on the guidance for 2Q, whether the improved guidance for the rest of the year, perhaps qualitatively in terms of what you see right now in health and what your expectations are with next few months? It looks like 26% growth all of this quarter to core groups.

I was just curious about trends going forward and what your thoughts are. Thank you.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Jen, why don't you talk about the total and I'll talk about health?

Jen Kimball -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

OK. Sure. So in terms of the full year guidance, obviously, it reflects a really strong Q1 and really an expectation for all three of our segments that they're going to do quite well for the remainder of the year. We did last year with a lot of volume momentum, much more, as I had mentioned.

Of course, there are a lot of moving parts, but I'll keep it simple and really just two -- kind of two key areas. It's really the travel -- the travel ramp coming through as well as just again, continued volume improvements. And then about $75 million, like I said in my remarks, is really the tailwind on top of the strong business performance from fuel prices. And again, the Q1 beat was about 5050, the travel ramp versus the fuel prices.

So that's continuing to flow through for the remainder of the year. So that's what you're seeing. We're well within our long-term targets, even without fuel prices. And we added some more, right, relative to what we had seen for Q1.

Higher fuel prices certainly are a nice benefit for us. They are moving daily. That being said, it will generate some nice cash for us going forward. So I'll turn that over to Melissa.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And then on health side, you mentioned the 26% growth in the first quarter. It's a really strong growth, 15% growth in SAS accounts. So, we feel really good about how we came out of open enrollment season.

Jen mentioned in the prepared remarks the fact that we have additional deposits that we intend to invest through the course of the year, so that will be an additional benefit as we go through the course of the year. And then the acquisition of benefitexpress will anniversary in June of this year. So if you look at how the year is going to roll out, first quarter was couple of quarters will have the benefit of that benefitexpress acquisition. That will become annualized.

The latter part of the year, we'll start to see more of a pick up from the deposits. And this is a reminder, the long-term growth rates that we've put out there for the health and fleet benefit solutions segment are 15% to 20%.

Jeff Cantwell -- Well Fargo Securities -- Analyst

OK. Great. Appreciate all the color. And then any updates on your cross-selling efforts and also on direct sales? Would love to hear about the progress you were making in both of those areas over the past quarter and maybe give us some color.

Thanks.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So on the cross-selling avenue, I'd say it is early for us. It's a place that we are really excited and in particular are excited. There are a couple of things that I talk to in my prepared remarks were examples of that, that have happened even organically.

We talked about one of the states will be extended what we're doing within our health business. It's all through a customer that we have on the fleet customer side, the launch of Flume for us is really excited about that. Not only did we bring it to market rapidly, we did it cloud first. It's all digital offering for paid and get paid.

We're testing that within our existing fleet customer base. So we have 450,000 customers that are smaller in size that are really the target audience for this product. We went through both an alpha and beta test using existing customers, who are learning from their experiences, how they're using the product. And that's allowing us to make rapid advancement.

So we feel like we have an ability, not only with our technical capability, but with our existing customer base, to combine those things together and actually bring products in the marketplace that allow us to extend the ecosystem that we have for offerings and really solve some of the problems that we're hearing that our customers have that are beyond the piece of the verticals that we're providing for them right now.

Jeff Cantwell -- Well Fargo Securities -- Analyst

OK. Great. Appreciate all the color. Thanks very much.

Operator

Next, we'll go to Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst

Hey, great. Good morning. Appreciate the time here. I just want to ask them to the travel and corporate segment and the visibility.

I know there's so many moving pieces. You did a good job of explaining what's going on, but just thinking about the visibility here and the line of sight both for the second quarter or second half of the year and how that might fall in relation to your longer term targets within that segment.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So we actually added in the appendix on Page 15, a lot of color around that segment because I know there's a lot of interest in it. So we have split out what's happening both in terms of volume and in terms of rate across travel and corporate payments. And you can see from our perspective that what we said last quarter is from a rate perspective, that as we blend in more and better payments customers into our corporate payments business, that you would see that rate trail down during the course of this year, which is what we did see, as expected.

And then on the travel related side that we expected to see that rate be close to what we had on a full year last year because we made some true-up adjustments in the fourth quarter. And that also came in actually a little bit better than we expected. So from a rate perspective, that's translating through. From a volume perspective, the volume trends and corporate payments came in very much on on what we had forecasted when we provided our guidance.

The thing that has come in higher than what we expected is on the travel side. And we talked about that being up significantly year over year. And when we created the range for the year as we guided, we thought about that as continuing down the path we're on, where we're growing significantly over prior year but still lagging a lot of 2019 up to the possibility of actually getting back to normal.

Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst

Gotcha. Yeah, I know. And I appreciate besides looking at it now. OK.

No, I think that's good. I think we have -- we can use that to run rate the rest of the year. Just really quickly, if you don't mind, I know tons of question, basically so on travel and cross-border. We -- I know from a regional perspective there's probably differences and recovery.

On a MasterCard earlier, right before this call, talked about Asia and how they see pent-up demand there given differences in lockdown timing. Do you see that as well? I mean, is that was given you maybe some some bullishness around a quick recovery just depending on where that pent-up demand plays out, given lockdown changes. Do you follow my question, Melissa?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, yeah. No, totally. Yeah, then there are definitely are regional differences that are playing out. Asia, and what we're seeing in Asia has lagged the rest of the world.

And so so yeah, that's been the one standout where both in the U.S. and in Europe, we've seen some nice trends returning back. And as part of as we thought about the guide for the year, that's part of what's in that range of possibilities in our mind. Does that return back to normal or does that take some time?

Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst

Got it. Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. Thanks.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Tien-Tsin.

Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Next, we'll go to Bob Napoli with William Blair. Your line is open.

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. A question just when you have the HSA assets fully invested, what is the level of assets? And then how do you manage the returns on that -- those assets? Are you lowering demand? Should we so we think about modeling it against the Fed funds rate or -- so what is the amount of assets when they're fully moved? How long does it take and how should we model the returns? I would imagine that interest income is also, like 90% pre-tax margin revenue.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So Jen talked about in her prepared remarks that there was $1.8 billion that are uninvested. We're -- part of what we're looking at right now is some -- well, I shouldn't say uninvested. They are invested with a third party not in their bank.

So they are earning interest income now. We are going to move them into our bank through the course of this year. And what we're evaluating is how much we want to use to replace CDs and how much we want to invest since we're going through that process right now. It will -- we will roll them in through the course of the year.

So think about as they're not going to do all at once because we want to take advantage of, market changes over time. And in terms of the rate, Jen talked about the fact that what we have right now is at 1.6%. Rates are certainly trending higher than that at the moment.

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

When the Fed raises 50 basis points next month, are you -- are these invested such that they'll move quickly or --

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

They -- when they get invested, they get invested in fixed rates over longer periods of time. So think of like the average of the -- what we have invested, I think, is four years. Is that right?

Jen Kimball -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Yeah.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So they tend to be over longer periods.

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

OK. And then just on Flume, where does Flume flow into the market competitively. I mean, who would you care tp compare it to from that competitive standpoint? And I mean, is the -- I mean, just talk a little bit more about the product set in Flume. Is it more, A, is the revenue stream more going to be AP automation-driven? What is the -- I guess, the game plan to build that? So where does it fit [Inaudible] product set.

Thanks.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, sure. And so it's a digital paying get paid model. And so we're allowing our customers to invoice and collect as well as bill out digitally. The revenue model will be a combination of transaction fee related and subscription fees.

And competitively that you would you would know others that sit in that space. Part of what we think that we offer to this customer next is that we already have a relationship with these customers. What they're looking for is help automating the solutions that they have in place. And so we think that we come in from a -- having a relationship that's trusted with that customer base, being able to solve some of their additional problems that they have.

We're finding interest with some of the smaller accounts. And as I said, we've got 450,000 of them that fit within our existing portfolio.

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

Thank you. Then just lastly, what can you call out on same store sales trends? What is that telling you about the economy? What are you seeing? Where do you see strength and what has been the trend, I guess, over the last several months?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Same-store sales trends have been favorable. It was up 4%. And if you look across the mix and again, when I talk about this and talking about North American fleet, which is, a lot of customers that sit in there and a lot of diversity of the type of customers that are there, as you might imagine, like mining, which is a relatively small, part of the business, is up pretty significantly, but so is construction, educational services. Some really strong increases and -- in a number of different categories, accommodations.

So you look across the mix, most categories were up. A lot of them were up in double digits.

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

Next, we'll go to David Koning with Baird. Your line is open.

David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks. Nice job.

My first question just on travel yield -- I know you've already answered a lot of questions on it, but because people are so sensitive to it each quarter, I'm just thinking sequentially, is there seasonality to that yield or it looks like mid-forties basis points or so? Is that kind of going to be consistent through the year?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. We mentioned on the last call of the fourth quarter, we had some true-up adjustments and so the rate in the fourth quarter was artificially high. That's why I had said if we use the full year rate for 2021, it would be largely what we expect to play out in 2022. And I'd say the same thing now.

It may not play out perfectly every quarter, but we do expect to see, the quarters come in line with last year's average rate.

David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst

OK. OK. Thank you. And then and then I guess, secondly.

In the Fleet segment, this is really good, obviously, mid-teens growth or kind of core X ex fuel prices. The rest of the year, is there going to be much difference? I mean, is it kind of going to be high single digit maybe for all the quarters or different quarters have different kind of core growth rates in fleet?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. It wasn't a great quarter. If you adjust it out for fuel prices and FX, it was up 15%. So, we feel really good about that.

And if you can see that in all of the underlying trends where the number of vehicles were up 9%. The payment processing transactions were up 12%. We do think we're getting some benefit in the quarter of things reopening still. And that would that comes from the gap between those two.

You're seeing that there were more transaction increases for vehicles, but we're also seeing some really great sales. And kudos to our sales teams that continue to be out there in the marketplace and to our digital teams that are bringing in business digitally. So we feel really good about our ability to continue to bring in new business, our ability to continue to retain the business that we have. The thing that I think that will be -- that were at least in our guidance, assuming, is that you don't see that same kind of macro pickup from same-store sales throughout the whole year, because you start to start to see the benefit at the end of last year where things were reopening.

But in terms of the framework we gave where we said we're going to have existing customer growth net new customers coming on new products and M&A. And we feel really good about how we blended the first quarter, very much in that framework with the additive part coming from existing customer growth. And as you go through the course of the year, we're going to continue to see new customers getting added, new products rolling out with continued benefit from M&A and then existing customer growth. That's the one thing that if you look at the course of the year, I expect to trail down a little from Q1, but the rest of it looking very much in line with our long-term framework.

David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst

Sounds great. Thank you.

Operator

Next, we'll go to Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Your line is open.

Sanjay Sakhrani -- KBW -- Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Most of my questions have been asked, but maybe digging in on a couple, maybe similar to the previous question asked on the travel yield. I know in the prepared remarks you guys talked about the accounting change on existing customer and corporate and then Avid is coming on as well, which is great.

And also, where are we with the Avid onboarding? Like how much more is going to come on over the course of the remainder of this year? And what's the impact on the yield as their volumes come on?

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I'm going to be sensitive talking about one customer. I would say that we did say that we have fully implemented Avid, which doesn't mean that that we're done from a migration perspective. And so, we feel good about the fact that we've gone through that process with them and we're seeing benefit coming through already.

We do think that we'll see continued growth in that relationship in the course of this year. I think that's probably where I'm going leave it.

Sanjay Sakhrani -- KBW -- Analyst

And I guess, like, as that happens, that should drive the yield lower over the course of this year because of the [Inaudible]

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

It was actually -- with the embedded payment relationships that we have where those customers are utilizing our underlying technology stack, those relationships tend to be less from a revenue yield perspective, but from a cost perspective is highly scalable. If you compare that to what we're doing and outsourced AP automation play with a small customer, where we have this more cost associated with that, it's going to have a higher yield from our per rate perspective, but there's more cost embedded in that. So what we're saying is as we sell more embedded payments, Avid being a component of that, we think you'll see that rate will migrate down a little bit. And then we've seen the bulk of that we think for the year, but we'll continue to trail down a little bit over time as you see more of those embedded payments mix in.

But from a profitability perspective, as we play at the year, we do believe that you're going to continue to see some nice margin expansion as volume increases.

Sanjay Sakhrani -- KBW -- Analyst

No. And that's very clear on that Slide 16 that you guys added to the deck. Absolutely. Just one last follow up.

Maybe get this [Inaudible] questions as well, lots of chatter on supply chain, possible recession, inflation or the economy. Do you think that you've adequately contemplated that in the outlook or where might there be blind spots? Thanks.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Sanjay. And we actually spend a lot of time thinking through the guide. And from our perspective, we feel like we have, been thoughtful about, where travels go, where we believe we're going to see volume trends really across the business and that's what we factored into the guidance that we've provided. From the customer perspective, it is interesting because we are seeing some really great volume trends, some really strong rebound, some reopening happening in mobility in many ways.

And at the same time, there is that underlying uncertainty around inflation. And from our perspective, we think that we've played out both of those things and the full-year guidance that we provided.

Sanjay Sakhrani -- KBW -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Next, we're going to go to Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks. When we think about the magnitude of upside to the business. Assuming let's just say hypothetically, there was never a pandemic and you had compounded at a rate that you thought you would, travel, obviously, still running at, I think you said 70%.

But broadly speaking, I mean, there's a massive amount of potential upside to normalize that, even beyond just getting back to '19 levels. And then you look into the other segments, how do you think through where we could be from an earnings power standpoint versus where we're trending right now and maybe breaking down the parts with travel being the first and most prominent, but obviously others are as well, if you don't mind.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. And I would start by saying that we're projecting the year to be ahead of '19. And so we -- part of what we feel good about is we've grown through what you're talking about and where there was -- where there has been some softness and some volumes relating to the pandemic. If I kind of walk across the business from a fleet perspective, the places that we think we still have upside coming from the pandemic are continued office reopenings as mobility continues to play out specifically in the North American fleet business and also internationally, which has had more impact from the pandemic than we have in the U.S.

On the health side, we are seeing some really strong return to spend patterns, but I think that's a place that we can continue to build upon. And then in travel -- and so the other part is just having that return to more normal levels and then continue to see that grow. There certainly is -- I think everyone knows this in their own lives. There's pent-up demand and desire on the -- from a personal travel perspective to move back to more of a normal environment.

So there are pockets across the company, but I think we still have an ability to continue to benefit from.

Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Got it. All right. Hey, one more quick one is just following up from some of the data points we learned at your Investor Day about. I think you mentioned more than around 10% of your customers utilize more than one of your segments.

And I'm curious how that's been going. And it was only been a little while since that day, but regardless the opportunity to continue that transition and cross-sell. Has there been more progress made and what kind of upside can we see from that? Thanks, guys.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just say that we've been really focused in a couple of areas. We've been focused on bringing them to market because we believe that that's a really compelling cross-sell capability.

And equally importantly is the ability to bring product into the marketplace rapidly, do that in a very digital manner. And so that's been a pretty big focus of ours over the first quarter of this year. We're also formalizing, the process of cross-selling, which, again, has happened historically more organically. And so I think you'll hear more about that play out from our perspective later in the year than you are going to see that rate down.

So again, the organic part of that is continued to happen across the business and we're excited about the ability to continue to offer both more product. So I think of it as two ways. One is the more traditional cross-selling component, but also with the work we've done and the technology, it's being able to present the product that we have in different ways to our customers and move people through the journey digitally. And that's equally exciting to me.

Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

Makes sense. Thanks, Melissa.

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Duration: 62 minutes

Call participants:

Steve Elder -- Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Melissa Smith -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Jen Kimball -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Mihir Bhatia -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Jeff Cantwell -- Well Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Tien-Tsin Huang -- JPMorgan Chase and Company -- Analyst

Bob Napoli -- William Blair -- Analyst

David Koning -- Baird -- Analyst

Sanjay Sakhrani -- KBW -- Analyst

Darrin Peller -- Wolfe Research -- Analyst

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